Tiscali Quicklinks. Please visit our Accessibility Page for a list of the Access Keys you can use to find your way around the site, skip directly to the main navigation, to the page content, or to more links within reference.
Lviv was formerly a trade and transit centre on the Black SeaBaltic and eastwest routes. Founded as a fortress town against Mongol invasion in 1256 by a Galician prince (the name means city of Leo or city of Lev), it was Polish from 1340 until 1772, Austrian (17721918), Polish (191939), and under German administration from 1941 to 1944. During the Nazi occupation, the Jewish community that had been present in the city since 1349 was wiped out. Lviv, which had been seized by Soviet troops in 1939, was finally annexed by the USSR in 1945.